


it's only the end of the world

by zauberer_sirin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, POV Bellamy Blake, Road Trips, Romance, Sort Of, basically it's a post s2 au possibly, like the earth is fine there's no inminent danger, no real plot just an excuse for makeouts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 23:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16105580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: (vaguely, sorry!) Based on this prompt:"(future!au or canon-deviation!au) There is a unanimous decision to explore more land, so it’s Bellamy and Raven in a car, on a roadtrip, being at peace and exploring and feeding their curiosity and feeling free and happy. Also in  love."





	it's only the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shortitude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/gifts).



The books didn’t do it justice, Bellamy thinks, and at the same time he thinks something like this never lives up to what’s written on the books. It’s complicated. It shouldn’t be this complicated. It’s just sunshine.

He watches Raven log the changes in temperature.

“You think that’s going to help?”

Sunlight dances on Raven’s bare shoulders, tangles its tendrils in her hair. She looks different in warm weather. He wonders if he does too, looking down at his own hands. Raven doesn’t answer, she focuses on the minutiae of the mission rather than question the futility of it. Bellamy doesn’t want to point out the obvious: even if any of them find a good place to live, even if they find resources, other Grounders to help them set up camp, to welcome them in their communities, even if any of that were to happen, getting word back to the scattered remnants of their people (each of them on a similar mission to Bellamy’s and Raven’s) would be near impossible.

_Near_ impossible is a kindness Bellamy tells himself.

But at least he and Raven were chosen to go south, and he appreciates discovering what real, warm sunlight feels like.

 

+++

 

The days being warmer doesn’t mean the nights are not cold. In fact the nights get colder. Their flimsy tent can no longer protect them. Raven takes the seats out of the back of the jeep and builds them an insulated sleeping area. As insulated as she manages. It’s still cold, but at least it’s not life-threatening cold. Just uncomfortable. That’s when they leave behind any pretense of distance, and start sleeping pressed to each other, tangled limbs for warmth, and listening carefully to each other’s coughs. Neither wants to do this alone (though, if Bellamy is being realistic, of all the people they sent on this mission they’re the only ones who _could_.)

One night he offers to turn their embrace for warmth into something else, his hands searching under the layers of the sleeping bag and Raven’s clothes. She pushes him away, stops him. Bellamy draws back, without bitterness, and wraps his arm over Raven’s shoulder again, just like they were before, offering each other heat and comfort, nothing else. They don’t talk about it afterwards. There’s nothing to talk about.

Living like this, always travelling, always together, leaves no room for modesty, they have to become each other’s everything — and that includes seeing each other naked a lot, a world of familiarity between logistics and injuries.

The further they go south the weirder the landscape gets. Bugs, too, get weirder. Or maybe, Bellamy reasons, he got too attached to the little bit of Earth — muddy and brown-green and full of trees and dampness — he got to know since coming down from the Ark. Lincoln drew them a useful guide of edible plants but even the plants, like the ground, like the sky, start to change.

When they’ve spent enough time on the road it’s easy to forget there are more people on the planet. People with names. People they love. It’s like a fantasy they made up. They are on the verge of forgetting _other people_ are a possibility.

Bellamy watches Raven work on adjustments for the solar panels that fuel the jeep, to take advantage of the longer days, the warmer sun, and wonders if forgetting would be a bad thing at all.

 

+++

 

“What the hell is that?” Raven asks, tugging at his sleeve.

Bellamy turns thinking danger, thinking how to protect both of them.

He should have noticed that Raven’s tone was one of curiosity, not fear. He follows her gaze to spot what she is looking at and smiles.

“If I remember all that ancient zoology knowledge crap they made us study in the Ark…” he tells Raven, narrowing his eyes at the creature. “I think that’s a seagull.”

“A seagull,” Raven repeats. “A _sea_ gull. Then that means…”

They get back to the jeep immediately.

The sun almost blinds them and makes them crash as they reach the end of the ravine. It takes them a moment to realize what it’s making the light so much brighter.

“According to the maps,” Bellamy says, mentally bringing up the image of the largest body of water within a reasonable distance from where they should have ended up. “This should be— “

Raven grabs him by the arm, violently, cutting him off.

“More checking it out,” she tells him, dragging him along towards the water. “Less being a weird nerd about it.”

Very wise idea, Bellamy thinks, following Raven’s lead and taking off his boots as he runs towards the waves.

They don’t dare go further than the gentle lapping of water against their ankles. The sun reflecting on the surface of the waves blinds them for a moment. It’s early and the sun is not enough to heat up the place yet. The sand feels wonderfully cold and damp under their feet.

They kick the surface of the water, splashing each other like kids.

Raven’s laughter almost makes Bellamy stop in his tracks, and the sound rings in his ears long after she’d stopped laughing.

They go back for a minute, sitting on soft sand. 

Bellamy forces himself not to think of the practical possibilities of the discovery — or how, historically, many communities have decided to settle next to a port, and maybe, just maybe, their chances of finding someone else have improved a bit, if they follow the coastline. He forces himself not to think of all that. 

He thinks, instead, about how books are wrong about the way sunlight bounces off water on a really sunny day.

Raven makes a face. A face that doesn’t match the day, the landscape.

“What is it?” Bellamy asks.

“Nothing. It’s beautiful.”

But Braven doesn’t do beautiful. 

“Raven.”

Her shoulders shift a little. But Bellamy is used to reading the slightest signs.

“What if we never find anyone else?” she asks. “Why if this is it? Just us?”

Bellamy looks around. What a lonely place this is. 

Bellamy looks down. They both have their toes buried in the cold sand, trying to get as much as this new sensation against their skin.

“I think…” Bellamy starts. The shock of tasting salt in the air still distracts his tongue. “I think that could be okay.”

When he turns Raven is looking at him and her eyes are a bit wider than usual and he has surprised her or touched her.

He tilts his head and leans in slowly, asking for permission. After all he’s been rejected once in this trip already. Raven presses her hand against his chest, but not to stop him. Their mouths meet halfway or crash if crashing was a slow scared thing or maybe Bellamy is thinking about the sound of waves before them.

He remembers he had kissed Raven once before. How many years has it been? They were so young, and he was so dumb not to try to hold on to this. He knows every crook of her body now, and yet this proximity is shocking

Raven cups his chin as she kisses him, a gesture so tender it almost makes Bellamy cry with the realization of how much he has wanted this.

She breaks the kiss, her mouth falling from his in a painful, scary second. She looks at Bellamy in that way of hers that means that she really wants him to pay attention to her words, he knows that face very well, it’s Raven’s “cut the bullshit, Bellamy” face. He suddenly feels very lucky that there’s such a face in the world.

“I don’t want it to be because we had lost hope,” she tells him. Bellamy shakes his head. He knows it’s not. “I don’t want you to think…”

She trails off, her fingers, tightly wrapped around the fabric of his shirt, explain the rest. Bellamy smiles. She had wanted it to be a choice. Bellamy wraps his hand on her knee and pulls her closer, almost on his lap.

“We’ll find others,” he tells her, his finger settling against the hot skin over her hip bone. “I promise.”

Raven nods and kisses him again.

The taste of salt on their tongues melt and then there’s just Raven.

Bellamy closes his eyes, so tight, but there’s so much sunlight here, this new kind of sunlight, and it gets under his eyelids and it makes kissing Raven all red and orange.


End file.
